Once Upon a Time in Seattle

Luckily for him, and for us, Emmett Watson's beat as a columnist for The Seattle Timesrequired him to stay in touch with his beloved native city. In his daily meanderings, usually accompanied by his miniature poodle, Tiger, Watson saw much that is invisible to the rest of us. Of course, he was around longer than most of us, too--over eight decades, five of them as a newspaperman whose happy fate it had been to assay the crooked timber of humanity and reassure us of its worth.

As he looked at...